For $9,995, your car could run on sugar and tequila
The E-Fuel Micro-Fueler, on display in New York. Click for photo gallery.
(Credit: Caroline McCarthy/CNET News.com)NEW YORK--"Henry Ford had it right all along," E-Fuel founder and CEO Thomas Quinn declared, referring to the fact that many original Model T Ford automobiles ran on the ethanol, not gasoline. But that was before the era of Prohibition, which banned production of the biofuel along with other forms of alcohol.
Now, he hopes ethanol can have a real revival.
In a press event at Revel, a Meatpacking District restaurant that features a greenhouse-like roof and trees growing inside, Quinn and his fellow executives unveiled the EFuel100 MicroFueler. It looks like a cross between a gas pump and an old-fashioned refrigerator, it'll cost $9,995, and it'll be available for customers in the fourth quarter of 2008 (if all goes well).
What is it, exactly? It's a home ethanol refinery. Connect it to a power source and a water source, add sugar "feedstock" and yeast or discarded alcohol (yes, that could mean last week's tequila) and in a week it can produce 35 gallons of ethanol that Quinn said any car can run on.
"I'm from Silicon Valley and I've worked with some very talented entrepreneurs in my lifetime," explained Quinn, whose previous start-up Gyration was responsible for a patent in Nintendo's "Wiimote" controller. "A couple years ago, I sensed this paradigm shift that we're all feeling today." He was referring to fossil fuel shortages and the rising cost of gasoline. With gas prices well over $3 per gallon, and no real middle ground in the market between industrial biofuels (there are still only 1,200 ethanol stations in the U.S., and only three in the entire state of New York) and "moonshining" operations that can be difficult and dangerous, he saw the opportunity to create the EFuel100.
"It's almost third-grade science to make ethanol," Quinn said. Anyone in the U.S. can obtain a license to produce alcohol, ethanol included.
But ethanol, for better or for worse, has gotten a bad rap. Some have connected rising food prices to the fact that corn-based ethanol means crops are going toward fuel rather than human consumption, and some reports have claimed that ethanol's carbon footprint isn't as "green" as it appears.
E-Fuel's executives have attempted to counter this rumor by saying that its sugar-based ethanol won't hurt food prices because sugar is a surplus crop, and that sugar ethanol is inherently more efficient than corn. And it's safe to make at home, because no combustion is involved.
Throughout the press conference on Thursday, Quinn reiterated that there's nothing unusual about making car fuel in your backyard.
"We're already in the ethanol business," he explained, gesturing to the bar at the back of the restaurant, "but we're using it as a beverage drink."
Caroline McCarthy, a CNET News staff writer, is a downtown Manhattanite happily addicted to social-media tools and restaurant blogs. Her pre-CNET resume includes interning at an IT security firm and brewing cappuccinos. E-mail Caroline. 
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Sugar at retail is $22.10 per 50 lb bag, from Costco. And that comes to $0.4422/lb retail price. So it would cost me $7.52 per gallon of ethanol. Add to it the electricity consumed in the refining process. Not counting my cost of hauling the 50 lb bag from the store, loading it up to the device. The $7.52 is pretty too steep a price to pay for a gallon of ethanol. The $7.52 is cheap, however, compared to a gallon of Bacardi 151.
And for $10K device... A very good distillation setup that is available from retail, right now, can be had for $299 with free shipping and handling. These are available from Brewhaus.
http://www.butanol.com/
1) If commercial ethanol plants are not able to break even without subsidies, why would a small scale personal version be able to?
2) As pointed out by WineMaker5000, sugar is very expensive in America. That is why ethanol producers use corn instead of sugar. It turns out that it is artificially expensive because of huge tariffs.
Molasses is no cheaper since it is mostly sugar and water. The increased weight of the water makes it more expensive to ship. It is used to produce rum because of theextra flavours in molasses.
3) America does not and cannot economically produce sugar. Increased sugar production increases Amazon rain forest destruction and dependence on foreign sugar. Really no advantage over oil.
4) Fermentation stinks. It produces all sorts of nasty smells and toxic byproducts. Everyone hates it when an ethanol plant is built in their town because of the smell. See the diagram of the device on their website. It includes a waste port and two vents.
5) I would worry about the safety of having a large tank of volatile fuel sitting around. What if it gets a leak, catches on fire, or tips over?
However, if one were to live in an Industrial Zoned District, and home brew, I'm sure this would be more legal. I just would not buy a residential home next to an ethanol manufacturer!
To make a long story short, from the looks of the unit, I would suspect it is capable of producing 1 to 2 gallons of ethanol per week. Even ignoring the cost of the sugar (which may or may not be cheaper then corn) and the cost of energy to distill the "hootch." I would think 1 or 2 gallons per week would not be enough to really make a dent in most peoples gas usage. As for cost of the unit, you can get a distillation column off ebay for about $200, put that on a used $50 beer keg and heat it with a $30 gas ring from Walmart and have the same thing at a much cheaper price. I suspect this is a very cool way to make vodka if you don't mind paying $10,000 for the best still in the neighborhood, but I hardly see it taking the world by a storm.
- by MD_Willington February 3, 2009 9:17 AM PST
- Ah jeez the gol darn revenuers will be all over ma fancy new still...
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(13 Comments)The "license" is a tax stamp from the BATFE...